Audacity Forum

Hello, I think this is more of a windows problem but it stemmed from clicking around in Audacity so I figured I'd try asking here.

I was following this thread: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 16&t=44275 for help with getting stereo mix to work. I had the same problem as the author, where stereo mix was enabled and set as the default device but when recording from stereo mix using Audacity no sound was being picked up. Even in the recording devices page it wasn't picking up the sounds that my speakers were playing.

Following the instructions on this post: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 50#p117927 stereo mix was finally picking up sound and it worked. I'm not exactly sure why it worked but what is happening now is that stereo mix will pick up the sounds from my laptop's internal speakers.

However, the problem now is that my external speakers (USB) will only play system sounds and sounds from my browser, but it won't play any sounds from Windows Media or iTunes anymore and sometimes it will play sounds from Audacity but sometimes it won't. Does anyone know how to fix this?

I've tried going into Windows Media and tried changing the device in there, when my internal speakers are selected files will play but not for my USB speakers.

I don't know if this is useful to fixing the problem but maybe it is... if I plug in headphones to the jack (it's a combo jack, so there's only one jack for in and/or out) it will play what the internal speakers are playing and it can also stereo mix record from that as well.

Thanks =)

If you want to record stereo mix you must have the playback device set to the speakers for the inbuilt sound device so that playback and recording are done from the same device.

When you don't want to record stereo mix, plugging in the USB speakers should usually set the default system playback device to the USB speakers. Any application that cannot choose its playback device (e.g. iTunes) must use the current system playback device. Audacity can choose its playback device, so in its Devices Preferences, set the Playback Device to "Microsoft Sound Mapper - Output" (if the host is set to MME) or "Primary Sound Driver" (if the host is set to Windows DirectSound). That should always enable Audacity to play back to the USB speakers if you make sure you start Audacity after you plug in the speakers. You may also need to restart iTunes before it will play to the USB speakers.




Gale